Merged Relativity+ / Farsight

[edd]

They break all the laws of physics. See this for example:

I don't know how you think something that is a prediction of physics can break the laws of physics.

"In section 2, the virtual photon's plane wave is seemingly created everywhere in space at once, and destroyed all at once. Therefore, the interaction can happen no matter how far the interacting particles are from each other. Quantum field theory is supposed to properly apply special relativity to quantum mechanics. Yet here we have something that, at least at first glance, isn't supposed to be possible in special relativity: the virtual photon can go from one interacting particle to the other faster than light!"

and I'm surprised you stopped at "at least at first glance". The article you're quoting from goes on to talk about why it doesn't violate causality.

Don't you get it yet? Virtual particles aren't particles. They're just an abstract way of divvying up a field. So when people say the photons interact via virtual particles, they are interacting via their own field.

I'm fine if you don't want to talk about what's happening as being virtual particles, but it is clearly the case that the interaction is not by their own field - at least certainly not in currently accepted field theories. If you want to claim it is happening by their own field then you need to produce a competitive theory to justify that claim, or at a minimum make it testable.

 

[Farsight]

... Farsight, you may be right that Baez's list becomes tart toward the end, but if so I bet it's the result of him reading the same tired misunderstandings and not-even-wrong unevidenced claims ad nauseum.

It isn't. It's just one big ad-hominem joke. Take for example the last item:

37. 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.

String theory gives no concrete testable predictions.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "readout" but I'm guessing you think Baez intended his list as a litmus test for cranks. I see it as a continuous scale, where even the best and brightest scientist could score a few points on a bad day. But as someone racks up more and more points, it's a lead pipe cinch they're not heading in the direction of Einstein.

The lack of a scale to say how well you did is part of the joke.

Let's take the two items I mentioned. The basis of #17 is a misunderstanding of the nature of science. A theory is not invalidated because it doesn't explain the underlying mechanism. A good theory predicts what will occur and how much. It's not required to say how or why.

It isn't true. We do physics to understand the world. The basis of #17 is to defend the shut up and calculate that leads to absurdity.

If a better theory replaces the first, there will still be "how" and "why" questions. It's like the creationist who demands to see the transitional fossil that fills the gap between two forms, and then when shown one proclaims "well now there are two gaps!"

Do not think for one nanosecond that rational scientific people who demand to understand are anything like creationists. They aren't. They're the opposite. However the people who say quantum physics isn't classical, you can never hope to understand it are playing the same role as the medieval bishop who said God surpasseth all human understanding. It's a con trick practised by people who live a life of ease, and whose salaries you pay for.

Number 28 is more problematic. The person making that statement has no evidence that stands up to scrutiny. They're forced into what is fundamentally a conspiracy theory. "My wonderful ideas would flourish if they weren't being suppressed by those meanie scientists!". It's like Sarah Palin complaining that the "lame stream" media are out to get her, instead of considering that maybe her ideas aren't gaining acceptance because they're just not very good ideas.

You need to think about this one some more. As a reminder, it's 28. 20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the orthodoxy. Think about why anybody would want to be abusive and call some other guy a crackpot. Why do you need to if you can show that his ideas just don't hold water? Answer: you don't. Capiche? So when you can't show that his ideas don't hold water, you attack the man. Because you're a self-appointed defender of orthodoxy.

Farsight, I'm another lurker who, whether you believe it or not, came to this thread with an open mind. If you'd presented evidence, even flawed evidence, I would still be on the fence. But taunts, dodges and endless repetition of the same prose instead of evidence from you has convinced me that I have better ways to spend my time.

I've given plenty of evidence, but your first post on this thread didn't refer to it. Instead it referred to Baez's crackpot index. When I'm the guy explaining that the orthodox view, that pair-production occurs because pair-production occurs, is crackpot. So yes, do spend your time in some better way. Like I will, because I've just wasted my time replying to you. Open mind? Pah!

 

[Farsight]

I don't know how you think something that is a prediction of physics can break the laws of physics.

I don't think of the alleged properties of virtual particles as some prediction of physics. We don't predict that a 1022keV photon can magically turn itself into an electron and a positron all on its own. We don't predict that an electron and a positron can turn into a single photon. We don't predict that the 1022keV photon magically turns itself into an electron and a positron and back to a single photon a trillion times a second whilst it moves through space at c. If anybody jumped up and said that, he'd get laughed out of court. And yet it's trotted out as an explanation for gamma-gamma pair production.

and I'm surprised you stopped at "at least at first glance". The article you're quoting from goes on to talk about why it doesn't violate causality.

Don't be surprised. I stopped because it's a rubbish article. The "explanation" it gives is totally unconvincing. In fact, the whole article is so bad I think I'll suggest to Don Koks that it should be taken down and/or replaced.

I'm fine if you don't want to talk about what's happening as being virtual particles, but it is clearly the case that the interaction is not by their own field - at least certainly not in currently accepted field theories. If you want to claim it is happening by their own field then you need to produce a competitive theory to justify that claim, or at a minimum make it testable.

This is the whole point of the photon-photon collider, edd. This is why I said what I did at the end of post #1733 on page 44. But don't think the whole of QED comes tumbling down because of this. It doesn't. You just see that the electron field is a disposition of the photon field rather than something totally different. You should have known this from the off anyway, because Einstein described a field as a state of space.

 

[lpetrich]

Ben m got confused between maths and physics.

While Real Physics doesn't use math, right? Farsight, your heroes disagree.

I'm not presenting some alternative to QED, I'm saying photons interact with photons, and that people who tell you that QED says they don't, are wrong.

I checked on the QED Lagrangian, and the photon field appears in it only with powers 1 and 2. No higher powers, as interactions would require. So in QED, photons do NOT directly interact. But from QED, one can find rates of indirect interaction of photons, and one gets the right numbers.

Huh? Virtual particles break all the rules of physics. Conservation of energy? Don't worry about that. Conservation of momentum? A mere bagatelle. Faster than light? Aw don't sweat it. It's cargo cult junk, steen, not science.

If you project macroscopic intuitions onto them, that is indeed a problem. But they exist to within what Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle allows.

(John Baez's Crackpot Index...)

It isn't. It's just one big ad-hominem joke. Take for example the last item:

37. 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no concrete testable predictions.

That may indeed seem like an ad hominem argument, but I think that it can be phrased in a more impersonal way. Like a theory that is supposed to be a revolutionary new theory while lacking concrete testable predictions.

It isn't true. We do physics to understand the world. The basis of #17 is to defend the shut up and calculate that leads to absurdity.

"Shut up and calculate" is more or less what Sir Isaac Newton stated about gravity: Hypotheses non fingo, "I don't make hypotheses". He was refusing to speculate about the nature of gravity. More generally, that's what's happened when observation and experiment get ahead of theory.

However the people who say quantum physics isn't classical, you can never hope to understand it are playing the same role as the medieval bishop who said God surpasseth all human understanding.

Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. That's complaining that quantum mechanics does not fit classical-limit intuitions. Even Newtonian mechanics has problems like that -- it has some violations of "intuitive physics" (Naïve physics^WP).

 

[thedopefishlives]

Farsight, no one here is denying that photons interact. What quantum physics says is that they don't interact directly. However, analogies are wasted on you since you take them entirely too literally, so how can we explain this to you in a way which makes sense to you?

 

[edd]

Don't be surprised. I stopped because it's a rubbish article. The "explanation" it gives is totally unconvincing. In fact, the whole article is so bad I think I'll suggest to Don Koks that it should be taken down and/or replaced.

I assume you're happier with the Matt Strassler explanation which includes this bit on why, effectively, the photon doesn't have a problem continuing at the speed of light, since you have referred to it yourself before

Here, by the way, we come across another reason why ``virtual particle'' is a problematic term. I have had several people ask me something like this: `` Since the diagram in Figure 6 seems to show that the photon spends some of its time as made from two massive particles [recall the electron and the positron both have the same mass, corresponding to a mass-energy (E = m c-squared) of 0.000511 GeV], why doesn’t that give the photon a mass?” Part of the answer is that the diagram does not show that the photon spends part of its time as made from two massive particles. Virtual particles, which are what appear in the loop in that diagram, are not particles. They are not nice ripples, but more general disturbances. And only particles have the expected relation between their energy, momentum and mass; the more general disturbances do not satisfy these relations. So your intuition is simply misled by misreading the diagram. Instead, one has to do a real computation of the effect of these disturbances. In the case of the photon, it turns out the effect of this process on the photon mass is exactly zero.

As I said, if you don't like the talk of this part of QFT in terms of virtual particles but accept it otherwise, I don't really have a problem. The problem in my opinion is this:

You just see that the electron field is a disposition of the photon field rather than something totally different. You should have known this from the off anyway, because Einstein described a field as a state of space.

So presumably the 9* other charged particles are in a similar position of having their fields as a 'disposition of the photon field'? And why are 6 of those a disposition of the photon field and not the gluon field, where an analogous situation could be said to exist? And why are some of those 'dispositions' coupled to yet more fields which may or may not couple to the photon field as well? For example, why does the electron as a 'disposition of the photon field' couple to the Z boson, when the Z doesn't couple to the photon (since it is electrically neutral)? Is the up quark field something from the photon field or the gluon field, and if the former then is the gluon field also a 'disposition of the photon field', again when gluons are electrically neutral?

It's clear that whatever you think, this idea of 'the electron field is a disposition of the photon field' is not standard, and is problematic at best.

As a bonus, it apparently throws out the beauty of electroweak unification.

*(counting the Ws only once)

 

[ctamblyn]

...
You put one photon through your photon-photon collider and nothing happens. You put two through, and lummee, you've got an electron and positron. So how did that happen?
...

Here's a thought experiment which illustrates why Farsight / John Duffield's argument is so absurd. If we chuck a lone electron through empty space, it goes in a straight line and nothing particularly interesting happens. If we chuck two electrons (but no other particles) through empty space so they pass reasonably close to each other, they travel along curved lines, and some bremsstrahlung photons are produced. So how did that happen?

Of course, the electrons interacted via a field which the electron field is coupled to - in this case, the electromagnetic field. By Farsight / John Duffield's type of argument, however, they must have interacted directly. In fact, by Farsight / John Duffield's type of argument, pretty much all the interesting particle interactions must be direct, because we chuck some stuff into a collider, blink, and different stuff comes out. I imagine that the chemists will be rather surprised to discover the truth about their field, too, when Farsight / John Duffield gets around to publishing a properly worked-out version of this revolutionary "all interactions are direct" theory.

While I'm here: Farsight - you still haven't answered my several questions from earlier.

 

[ctamblyn]

This is the whole point of the photon-photon collider, edd.

The whole point is to test whether QED is correct. QED tells us to expect electron/positron pairs to be produced, with a specific probability, and with a specific distribution of momenta. We could test your idea too, except no-one can make quantitative predictions with the vague, contradictory imagery and amusing numerology you have provided over the last seven years or so.

Why don't you lay everyone's doubts to rest and bring to a close these fruitless arguments over analogies and metaphors, by showing that it is possible to write down a field theory of what appear to be interacting charged particles, but in which the only field that really exists is the electromagnetic field, and then show that it reduces to QED in the appropriate limit? Until then, you are proselytizing with great vigour and little rigour on behalf of a theory which doesn't even exist.

 

[phunk]

So you believe pair production occurs because pair production occurs. Beam me up Scotty!

No, I believe pair production occurs because the uncertainty principle predicts it and 2 high energy photons in the same place can make the virtual particles invovled become real particles.

 

[Farsight]

Farsight, no one here is denying that photons interact.

We're getting there. Slowly.

What quantum physics says is that they don't interact directly.

Or maybe not? Do photons interact with photons or not?

However, analogies are wasted on you since you take them entirely too literally, so how can we explain this to you in a way which makes sense to you?

More to the point, how can you explain it in a way that makes sense at all. You've got a photon-photon collider, and you're trying to say photons don't interact directly. Hmmn. Run that by me again.

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While Real Physics doesn't use math, right? Farsight, your heroes disagree.

But ben m didn't know that light was effectively alternating displacement current. Even though I've referred to Taming Light at the Nanoscale before. He has no concept that you get it to go round and round and then move it bodily for conduction current.

I checked on the QED Lagrangian, and the photon field appears in it only with powers 1 and 2. No higher powers, as interactions would require. So in QED, photons do NOT directly interact. But from QED, one can find rates of indirect interaction of photons, and one gets the right numbers.

So give some mathematics. You know how to do latex here, like this:

Only don't forget to define your terms. You can maybe take a shortcut with them, see Wikipedia. Then you can tell Robo why your maths trumps my experiment. Because you've got the fairy and the chocolate teapot.

If you project macroscopic intuitions onto them, that is indeed a problem. But they exist to within what Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle allows.

The HUP is a wave thing. And virtual particles aren't real particles. If they were, they wouldn't be virtual. Duh!

(John Baez's Crackpot Index...) That may indeed seem like an ad hominem argument, but I think that it can be phrased in a more impersonal way. Like a theory that is supposed to be a revolutionary new theory while lacking concrete testable predictions.

What you might call "malleable" theories are arguably beginning dominate contemporary physics, but that's one for another day.

"Shut up and calculate" is more or less what Sir Isaac Newton stated about gravity: Hypotheses non fingo, "I don't make hypotheses". He was refusing to speculate about the nature of gravity.

Only in Opticks query 20 he said: "Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines?" Newton wasn't interested in light for nothing. And he knew that "gross bodies" and light were convertible into one another. But sadly he thought in terms of the matter nature of light rather than the wave nature of matter.

Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo. That's complaining that quantum mechanics does not fit classical-limit intuitions.

Shrug. I will not accept quantum mysticism peddled by quacks.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The whole point is to test whether QED is correct. QED tells us to expect electron/positron pairs to be produced, with a specific probability, and with a specific distribution of momenta. We could test your idea too, except no-one can make quantitative predictions with the vague, contradictory imagery and amusing numerology you have provided over the last seven years or so.

Huff, puff, feathers. Apparently QED tells us that photons interact via electrons, and electrons interact via photons. As if hydrogen atoms twinkle, and magnets shine. When actually, they don't.

By Farsight / John Duffield's type of argument, however, they must have interacted directly.

Yes, electrons do interact directly, and I've explained how it works. It's quantum field theory. Not quantum twinkle theory. The electron's field is what it is, and virtual particles are field quanta.

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No, I believe pair production occurs because the uncertainty principle predicts it and 2 high energy photons in the same place can make the virtual particles involved become real particles.

Those two photons make two virtual fermions pop out of nowhere and become real fermions, then the two photons disappear. Like magic. Ho hum. But if the electron and positron don't get away from one another they annihilate, and now you've got... two photons! Funny that. And between times, the electron's got its spin and magnetic moment and you can diffract it. But hey, it's a "fundamental" particle, so shut up and calculate like some obedient little Sunday school kid.

 

[ctamblyn]

Huff, puff, feathers.

Huh?

Apparently QED tells us that photons interact via electrons, and electrons interact via photons. As if hydrogen atoms twinkle, and magnets shine. When actually, they don't.

QED tells us that the photon field is coupled to the electron field, but by all means continue thrashing that straw man rather than listen to what people are actually saying. QED also tells us that there is no self-coupling of the photon field, nor of the electron field, which is why photons do not interact directly with other photons, nor electrons directly with other electrons.

Yes, electrons do interact directly,

Shark-jumpingly wrong.

ETA: Oh, by the way, you forgot to answer these questions again.

 

[Farsight]

I assume you're happier with the Matt Strassler explanation which includes this bit on why, effectively, the photon doesn't have a problem continuing at the speed of light, since you have referred to it yourself before.

Yes. I don't think he quite nails it, and he doesn't understand mass. But what he says is a whole lot better than some of the appalling junk that's out there masquerading as physics.

As I said, if you don't like the talk of this part of QFT in terms of virtual particles but accept it otherwise, I don't really have a problem. The problem in my opinion is this:

"You just see that the electron field is a disposition of the photon field rather than something totally different. You should have known this from the off anyway, because Einstein described a field as a state of space".

Since when was unification a problem? It's a solution, not a problem.

So presumably the 9* other charged particles are in a similar position of having their fields as a 'disposition of the photon field'?

It would be better to say 'state of space'.

And why are 6 of those a disposition of the photon field and not the gluon field, where an analogous situation could be said to exist?

You're getting confused about the gluon field. Gluons in ordinary hadrons are virtual. We've never seen a gluon. In low-energy proton-antiproton annihilation we never see gluons. Never. But there's a 1% cross section for direct annihilation to gamma photons. OK, a gluon is something to do with the tensile strength of the bag model, yeah? And if you shake a rubber mat you need its tensile strength for a wave to propagate, yeah? And a photon has an E=hf wave nature, yeah? So what is it that keeps that photon propagating at c? Magic?

And why are some of those 'dispositions' coupled to yet more fields which may or may not couple to the photon field as well? For example, why does the electron as a 'disposition of the photon field' couple to the Z boson, when the Z doesn't couple to the photon (since it is electrically neutral)? Is the up quark field something from the photon field or the gluon field, and if the former then is the gluon field also a 'disposition of the photon field', again when gluons are electrically neutral?

Start a thread and I'll tell you all about it.

It's clear that whatever you think, this idea of 'the electron field is a disposition of the photon field' is not standard, and is problematic at best.

It's more standard than you think. Think classical electromagnetism, where we have electromagnetic field variations and standing electromagnetic fields.

As a bonus, it apparently throws out the beauty of electroweak unification.

LOL. As if you understand it.

 

[phunk]

Those two photons make two virtual fermions pop out of nowhere

No, one photon does that.

But if the electron and positron don't get away from one another they annihilate, and now you've got... two photons!

No, virtual electron/positron pairs annihilate into a single photon, not two, and the second photon is what prevents that by providing the energy to separate them and promote them to real particle status.

And between times, the electron's got its spin and magnetic moment and you can diffract it.

Indeed, and that's why vaccuum polarization exists, because the virtual particles constantly popping in and out of existance have real properties.

And virtual particles aren't real particles. If they were, they wouldn't be virtual. Duh!

The word "virtual" is not a statement that they don't exist. They aren't fully particles, but they are real things that actually exist that can become particles if given more energy. They are an extremely well proven phenomena that lead to predictions that have been observed, like the mass of the top quark, the lamb shift, the kasimir effect, vaccuum polarization, etc.

 

[edd]

Right, so it seems you think everything is electromagnetic field. The ball is in your court to demonstrate this by giving details of a suitable theory. It's also quite untrue to keep portraying this idea as somehow what QED or any other bit of currently accepted physics says.

Anyway, I'll give you this - if everything is electromagnetic fields then it's obviously pretty hard to argue that photons don't directly interact with photons...

 

[Farsight]

ETA: Oh, by the way, you forgot to answer these questions again.

You like How about you provide some credible references when I've referred to Minkowski and Maxwell and Heaviside and Einstein and NASA and a whole lot of other legitimate physics. Bah, when you stop beating your wife?

 

[ctamblyn]

The LaTeX parser at forkosh.com is buggy. The mass parameter m should not appear multiplied by the charge e.

This would have worked:

[img]http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.cgi?\mathcal{L} = \bar{\psi}(i\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu - m_{\textrm{e}})\psi - eA_\mu\bar{\psi}\gamma^\mu\psi - \frac{1}{4} F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu}[/img]

Regardless, you can clearly see that there is no photon-photon interaction term, nor an electron-electron one. All of the interactions take place because of the single interaction term in the middle, coupling ψ (the electron/positron field) to A (the electromagnetic field) with coupling constant e. QED is just as described by virtually everyone else in this thread.

"Direct interactions" of the type you've been talking about do not happen in QED. On top of that, you are unable to provide any alternative field theory (or any predictive theory whatsoever) in which those direct interactions do happen, and which reproduces QED's observable behaviour in some appropriate limit. Therefore, this "direct interaction" theory of yours is mere crackpottery.

 

[Roboramma]

You like How about you provide some credible references when I've referred to Minkowski and Maxwell and Heaviside and Einstein and NASA and a whole lot of other legitimate physics. Bah, when you stop beating your wife?

You have referred to them, but not in a way that actually supports the things that need supporting.

 

[Farsight]

Right, so it seems you think everything is electromagnetic field.

I didn't actually say that. Try saying it seems you think everything is field. It doesn't sound too unreasonable, does it? Seeing as what we talk about is quantum field theory.

The ball is in your court to demonstrate this by giving details of a suitable theory. It's also quite untrue to keep portraying this idea as somehow what QED or any other bit of currently accepted physics says.

When it comes to the electromagnetic field, what I said was true. Classical electromagnetism doesn't have an electromagnetic field and an electron field. Don't blame me if QED has two fields where once there was one. Like as if Maxwell's should have bothered with his unification. And the electroweak interaction just doesn't count.

Anyway, I'll give you this - if everything is electromagnetic fields then it's obviously pretty hard to argue that photons don't directly interact with photons...

Au contraire: it's obviously pretty hard to argue that photons don't interact with photons when you're talking about a photon-photon collider.

...because the virtual particles constantly popping in and out of existance...

Groan.


Can somebody have a word with Phunk please?

 

[ctamblyn]

You like How about you provide some credible references when I've referred to Minkowski and Maxwell and Heaviside and Einstein and NASA and a whole lot of other legitimate physics.

You chose to quote just a small fragment of my questions, in such a way that their meaning of has been utterly obscured. I will reproduce them here in full.

John Duffield, you have not answered even one of these questions in a remotely satisfactory way:

1. We've been waiting for evidence for this claim of yours - that all fundamental particles are somehow excitations of the electromagnetic field - since this thread started, almost four years ago. Do you ever plan to cast your theory in a form which can be compared quantitatively with experiment?
2. How about you provide some credible references that support your assertion that the electromagnetic field is due to a twisting/turning of three dimensional space, instead of (a) references that don't support that assertion (but perhaps contain a couple of "magic words" like "screw" and "magnet"), (b) mere repetition of your unsupported assertions, and (c) Google search results?
3. Using the same methodology which produced your spiral diagram, how do you think the following three field configurations would look?
   • A uniform magnetic field in the x-direction.
   • A uniform electric field in the x-direction.
   • A linear superposition of the previous two fields.

Bah, when you stop beating your wife?

What you are saying here is that you cannot properly answer my questions without admitting how ludicrous your position is. It is hardly my problem if you have chosed to defend the indefensible.

 

[Farsight]

The LaTeX parser at forkosh.com is buggy. The mass parameter m should not appear multiplied by the charge e.

Yeah sorry I missed that. There's what looks like another public latex render engine at http://latex.codecogs.com/png.latex? Let's give it a whirl:

Regardless, you can clearly see that there is no photon-photon interaction term, nor an electron-electron one. All of the interactions take place because of the single interaction term in the middle, coupling ψ (the electron/positron field) to A (the electromagnetic field) with coupling constant e. QED is just as described by virtually everyone else in this thread. "Direct interactions" of the type you've been talking about do not happen in QED. On top of that, you are unable to provide any alternative field theory (or any predictive theory whatsoever) in which those direct interactions do happen, and which reproduces QED's observable behaviour in some appropriate limit. Therefore, this "direct interaction" theory of yours is mere crackpottery.

It isn't crackpottery. It's reality. Get used to it. It's a photon-photon collider. There is no chocolate teapot. Photons interact with photons. So QED needs a fix.